Genma Short Subjects
by Nezuko
Summary: A collection of short pieces about Shiranui Genma, from his days at the Academy to his ANBU service and after.
1. Chemistry

**Genma Short Subjects**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

**Chemistry**

Genma first got interested in poisons when he was an Academy student. Takahara-sensei had showed them how to crush the leaves from a certain plant, then brew the mash with alcohol, add a few drops of lye until the solution turned opaque, then paint it on a senbon. All that was sort of interesting and the glassware was kind of cool. But it was the way the mouse test-subject had died almost instantly when sensei stabbed that senbon through its tail that had really gotten Genma's attention.

Soon enough Genma was brewing up poisons of his own. Trying different plants and chemicals and spores, reading books and scrolls that everyone said were way too complicated for him, books like _The Neurobiological Poisons of the Mangrove Regions, _and _Venoms and Toxins in Animals._

He learned a lot about how poison worked, how to make it, how to use it. By the time he graduated to genin he was considered something of a prodigy. But it wasn't until he was a thirteen-year-old chuunin, hiding from Iwagakure shinobi high in the mountains of Earth country, that he really _understood_ about poison. When he was choking and gagging and gasping for breath, and watching his sensei and his teammates all writhing and vomiting and turning slaty blue. It wasn't until he had too little antidote and too many people to try to save, that he _got_ poison in a visceral sense.


	2. Porcelain Armor

**Genma Short Subjects**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

**Porcelain Armor**

The mask, Genma thought, handling it for the first time, was made of porcelain. Or something like it. He rapped his knuckles experimentally against the white face with its gaily painted red details and frighteningly empty eye holes. It felt hard like porcelain, but more resilient. Springier. Porcelain itself would shatter under a single blow from an enemy's weapon, after all, but an ANBU mask was almost impossible to break. Like the shinobi who wore it, it was hard as diamond. The armor of the village.

He hefted it on one hand, staring into the vaguely feline - or possibly bear-like - face like there was a secret to be had from it. Like he was looking into a mirror and waiting for his soul to answer.

The mask stared back. You are ANBU now, it said. You are mine.


	3. Tattoo

**Genma Short Subjects**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

**Tattoo**

When you get a tattoo, a tiny needle pricks hundreds and hundreds of tiny holes in your skin so the ink can get underneath the top layers and reside permanently in the dermis. It is the natural translucency of the epidermis that makes the colors of a tattoo shine through, and the reason that a pale-skinned person is likely to have more vivid art on his body than someone dark.

Genma has pale skin.

The ink they tattooed him with was blood red, and it mixed with his blood and ran down in little scarlet rivulets as the needle sank in again and again, carving out a swirling two-part spiral on Genma's left biceps.

The scab had barely finished forming over the new tattoo before he got his first mission assignment from ANBU: an assassination, but that was no surprise. Genma was an assassin, and ANBU was the organization where people like him carried out the dirty work that others refused to sully their hands with.

It was what came after that wasn't part of his plan. The way the little girl's eyes had stared, terrified, at Genma in his black uniform and grey armor with a cheerful red and white festival mask on his face, that stayed with him, boring into him in the dark as he tried to sleep. The soft sob of the child taking one last breath before his poisoned needles stopped her heart and lungs, that he heard in the silence all around him.

It was two in the morning when he reported in to ANBU HQ to tell them the mission was complete, and half-past four when one of the more senior agents found him curled and shaking under an icy shower.

"This job," he told Genma, pulling him out and bundling him into a towel, "really gets under your skin."


	4. Walk in the Park

**Genma Short Subjects**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

**Walk in the Park**

There was a tree in just the right spot. The absolutely perfect spot. And Genma was in the tree, waiting. Waiting for his target to come sauntering up the pebbly little path where golden sunlight dappled the ground with leafy shadows. Genma was a leafy shadow.

He sat in his tree and he waited and he watched. And his target appeared at last. A wealthy merchant, who had made his fortune on the broken backs of countless others. Who had broken one too many backs. He was as corrupt and filthy as the job Genma had been sent to do.

Genma readied his weapons.


	5. Fantasy

**Genma Short Subjects**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

**Fantasy**

It was dark. So dark the air felt heavy. And silent. The only sounds were the echoes of Genma's panting breaths and low whimpers off the concrete walls. It was cold. Genma shivered, which only made his broken ribs hurt more. And hard. He lay on a damp concrete floor, trying to move as little as possible. Trying to get breath in without making the pain worse.

But Genma wasn't there. He was far, far away. Someplace bright and sunny. A forest glade, with birdsong and breezes rustling in the leaves. Someplace warm, where the heat of the sun soaked into his long body as he lay on the soft, springy grass.

This was why, he thought, ANBU were taught self-hypnosis.


	6. Dream

**Genma Short Subjects**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

**Dream**

He wasn't really supposed to have it, but Genma read it anyway. A copy of a mission report made to Intel by someone whose face he couldn't remember and whose name he never knew. "Two ANBU dead, one rescued, one Konoha chuunin rescued," it started. "Retrieval mission to Earth Country in pursuit of team assigned to mission IS-46041." Genma skipped over the description of the retrieval team's composition and journey, and picked it up at, "...infiltrated the prison. We found one agent, Shiranui Genma 010203, alive and under torture. With him was the body of Hoashi Seijuro 010264. Hoashi had been gutted with the interrogator's katana..."

He stopped reading. It was so dry, so simple in the report. There was no eerily masked interrogator wielding a hammer. No splintering bones in Genma's hands. No wide-eyed boy prisoner counting off the fractures one by one. There was no torrent of Seijuro's blood pouring from his gaping abdomen. No lacerated intestines spilling out. No foul odor, no screaming.

Except in Genma's head. In his nightmares it all came to life again.


	7. The First Time

**Genma Short Subjects**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

**The First Time**

Genma saw him for the first time standing with a cluster of other rookies. Shinobi who had joined ANBU after the nine-tails' devastation. They looked anxious and cocky and still a little dazed with the shock of what had just happened to their village. Still grieving for their dead.

There was a tall one there, with spiky reddish-brown hair and gently rounded cheeks. He was handsome. Striking even. At least Genma thought so. As he neared the group, Genma watched them watching him.

The tall one nodded to him. "Sempai," he said.

"Kouhai," Genma nodded back. And continued on his way.


	8. Three Words

**Genma Short Subjects**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

**Three Words**

There was no doubt, really that Raidou loved him. Not that he'd ever have said it out loud. And there was no doubt that Genma loved Raidou. He'd even admit it, but Raidou wouldn't believe him. But you don't spend years at each other's backs, as mission partners, as friends, without there being some greater cement than simple loyalty to a teammate operating.

Genma finally told Raidou he loved him when Raidou lay dying, his face and shoulder torn and molten to a sick plastic ooze. He sat in a hospital room, holding his comatose friend's hand, smelling the antiseptic that barely disguised the nauseating stench of rotting flesh, and he wept and told him he loved him, and if he died he'd never forgive him.

The medics left them alone. They'd told Genma Raidou couldn't hear him, but this wasn't for Raidou anyway, it was for Genma. It was too late for the patient in the bed. Except... Raidou lived. He never told Genma, but he _did_ hear him.

Not even six months later, it was Genma who lay dying. Cold and shaking with shock. Fevered from infection. Convulsing from chakra damage. Vomiting and coughing blood in scarlet torrents that let Raidou _see_ the life deserting his friend as they waited for help to arrive.

He held Genma's body close to his own and rocked him, whispered to him, told him stories, sang to him. Anything, anything to keep Genma on this side of the border between Life and Death.

By the time the medics got there, Raidou was sure it was too late. But Genma had heard him. Heard Raidou using every other word he knew except that dangerous little three-word phrase to tell Genma he loved him.

And Genma lived.

ooo ooo ooo

_AN: Dedicated to Kilerkki, who wrote the thread in the Scarlet Spiral RPG with me, as the Raidou to my Genma, which inspired this short._


	9. Big Brother

**Big Brother**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on the manga "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The Genma and Raidou and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei. Taisei is an original character created by sna._

Genma was nearly four years older than Kobayashi Taisei, and as such he was a kind of elder brother. A friend, too. And a guardian. That's how he saw himself. They had a bond that was forged in the bowels of a torturer's dungeon, and as long as he lived, Genma would never forget the sound of Taisei counting the fractures as the enemy broke Genma's hands. It had been a mercy of the sort only a madman could give, and it had saved Genma's sanity.

Taisei was still insane. Even rehabilitated and reintegrated into Konoha life, outfitted in ANBU gear and moved into an apartment two floors below Genma, he was only barely this side of safe around others. Which was probably why, Genma thought, looking at his scraggly young friend, nobody had bothered to teach the kid how to shave.

It kind of baffled him, when he thought about it, that they'd trust Taisei with kunai and katana, but not a razor and shave foam. He decided to start the lessons with example.

"Taisei, come hang out with me while I shave, then we'll do you," he said.

Taisei, ever the pragmatist, asked, "Will there be jam?"

"Sure," Genma replied. "Toast and jam. Come on." He set up a razor, shave cream, a basin of water and a hand mirror for Taisei, then started to work on his own face while Taisei munched on the toast and jam.

"Whatcha doin' that for, Genma?" Taisei asked, tilting his head to one side. "I don't like whipped cream on your face." He frowned and rubbed at his own stubbly cheek.

"It's shave cream. Wait, here, feel." Genma leaned down so Taisei could touch the not yet covered side of his cheek. "See how it's all prickly?"

"Like me!" Taisei exclaimed happily. "And cactuses. Cacti. Cactusi!"

"Well I don't want a beard."

"You look stupid with a beard, Genma. Like an old man. Like when you got sick a couple months ago after that mission? And you grew a beard? You looked like a beggar from Wind Country."

"Thanks." Genma rolled his eyes. "That's why I'm shaving. The shave cream softens the stubble - that's the prickles, and then you scrape it off with a razor. Or you can use a kunai."

"Is that why you were rubbing your face with your kunai before?"

"Yeah. Anyway, look, here's what you do. You take the foam and smear it on. See?" Genma took a handful of the shave cream and held it up to his own cheek. "Now you do yours."

"OOOH I get to... Um..." Taisei halted, holding a handful of the cream and looking at Genma with worried eyes. "What are we doing, Genma?"

"Shaving. We're shaving."

"Yay! I get to shave with Genma!"

By the end of the lesson there was a lot of foam, a little blood, and two relatively smooth grinning faces.

"Next I'm gonna shave my cactusi!"

"Er... yeah. You do that." Genma handed Taisei a little leather case. "Anyway, this is your shave kit."

"It's like yours!" Taisei's eyes were big with surprise.

"Yeah, like mine. Except this one's yours." Genma grinned. "Wanna get some ice cream?"

It was kind of fun, being a big brother.


	10. Jelly

**Jelly**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on the manga "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. Genma and Raidou and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei. _

Genma stared at the translucent brownish substance smeared on the toast Raidou handed him. He picked it up and studied it from several angles, tilted the slab of crisped bread this way and that, watching the glassy gel ooze slowly in the direction of gravity. He even sniffed it, quickly pulling his head back in an elaborate pantomime of disgust, like a cat who'd stuck its nose into a bowl of sake. With a shake of his head, Genma set the toast down, pushed the plate away from himself, and scowled.

"I'm not trying to poison you, you know." His scar-faced breakfast companion didn't even look up from his newspaper. Just sipped from the large mug of murky black in his hand.

"Raidou, it's nasty."

"It's gourmet. You wouldn't know nasty if it bit you on the ass."

"You could bite me on the ass - that'd be nasty." Genma smirked and waggled an eyebrow.

"Not the point." Raidou refused to acknowledge the bait and shoved the plate of suspect toast closer to Genma. "Try it."

Ignoring the 'delicacy', Genma stood up, ran a hand through his still sleep-mussed hair, and padded across the small kitchen to retrieve a carton from the refrigerator and a pan from a hook on the wall.

"Only you would even consider coffee jelly. I'm having eggs."


	11. Unchained

**Unchained**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

Just a little more, just a little more, Genma thought, and waited, crouched behind a stack of empty crates that had once held onions and peppers and other strong-smelling vegetables. He was folded into a space most people wouldn't think was big enough to conceal a cat, let alone a fourteen-year-old boy already shooting up towards his adult height. But Genma wasn't just any fourteen-year-old boy, though if you stripped him to his undies and stood him in a line-up of fourteen-year-old boys from this village the only difference you'd notice would be maybe a slightly more developed musculature and a few more--okay for a kid his age, a _lot_ more scars. But boys will be boys and naked, or nearly so, you'd have to know a thing or two to know Genma was a ninja.

But crouched in that tiny shadow, waiting for his signal, if you could have seen him then--which unless you were an even better ninja than he was _and_ you knew where to look, you couldn't have--you'd have had no doubt you were looking at a shinobi. Dressed in concealing black, with his shaggy brown hair hidden under a hitai-ate tied bandanna-style in front, wearing a chuunin vest that had already seen a year's worth of service, with Konohagakure's distinctive emblems on sleeve and back, and across the metal plate on that misnamed forehead protector, and chewing idly on a slender metal throwing needle as if the lethal weapon were no more than a blade of grass, Genma looked every inch the ninja.

If you could see him.

Which you couldn't.

He watched and he waited and then the moment finally came. The reason he'd crouched so long in that shadow that his young knees had grown stiff and the aches in his shins and back that his sister called "growing pains" had grown so insistent he'd have given almost anything to be able to stretch and relieve them. It came just when he finally thought it never would. The target appeared, shopping at the little vegetable stall a full three hours later than the informant had said she'd be there. Genma had just one job. He wasn't the killer on this mission. He wouldn't be an assassin for another three years. Oh he'd kill before then, and he'd killed already, but not with the cool detachment an assassination required.

No, his job was infinitely simpler. Less costly to the soul. He was the distraction.

He was chosen for this particular job because he had a really phenomenal jutsu, one he'd only recently mastered, that let him manipulate metal. And the vegetable stall was chained to a stone block, moored there like a ship at anchor. All Genma had to do was channel the chakra and cast his new jutsu, to melt one link of that chain. It took a lot of concentration, but concentration was something Genma could manage, no matter what his sister might say. He focused his chakra, formed the hand seals, and cast the jutsu. The link in front of him erupted in a hot spray of suddenly fluid, white-hot iron, spattering onto his foot and burning a new scar there. It took every single bit of willpower Genma had ever had not to make a sound as the molten drop sizzled through the fabric of his sandal and seared into the skin of the top of his foot.

He wasn't able to stop himself staggering just a little, and putting a hand out against the wheel of the vegetable stall. Which he'd just unchained. It creaked and groaned, and a couple of purple onions rolled down from their perfectly stacked pyramid to bounce on the dusty street. Then the stall lurched, gravity took over and it started rolling.

It was definitely a distraction. In fact, it was the very distraction they'd planned. Just... a few minutes early. Fortunately for Genma, the other members of his team were ready. The target was taken down, as planned, and the ninja booked it out of there while the villagers were still chasing down that runaway cart. If he had to take a little abuse from his teammates about being a rapid shooter, well, so be it. At least the mission was completed. And his jutsu had worked.

As far as Genma was concerned, it had been an unqualified success.


	12. Bunny

**Genma Short Subjects**

_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei._

This one is dedicated to Keryn, aka Dianoetic, player of Inoichi at Fallen Leaves, who asked for a bunny.

**Bunny**

Genma watched his temporary students with what appeared to be vague, disinterested disapproval, but was in fact a keen, evaluating eye. "Just one day, Genma-san, please!" Isuzu had begged, and with his wrist in a cast and missions off-limits for another week, and the alternative being sitting in on a T&I committee meeting about the use of poisons in interrogations, Genma had acquiesced.

"Sorry, Ibiki," he'd said, "but I promised Isuzu-sensei over at the Academy I'd watch her brats while she took her mom to the doctor."

So now he found himself watching seventeen little incipient ninja chase eight goats around a field. He'd promised a prize to anyone who managed to catch an animal. So far, the goats were winning.

But one of the little proto-ninja cheated. Or saw underneath the underneath and acted on it. Both were, in Genma's mind, excellent choices. He wasn't particularly surprised to see it was Inoichi's flaxen-haired brat. She tugged at Genma's leg and grinned a gap-toothed 8-year-old grin up at her father's friend, and handed her temporary sensei a frantically squirming rabbit. A bunny really, just barely old enough to be apart from its mother.

"I got a aminal, Genma-niichan," Ino said. "Can I have my prize be I get to keep it?"


	13. Toothpaste

**Genma Short Subjects**  
_by Nezuko, Prince of Rats_

_This is a work of derivative fiction based on the manga "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi._

**Toothpaste**

The toothpaste was strange. To start with, the label was in a script Genma couldn't read, and the colors on the packaging were just a little off: blood red script that made him think of the consequences of _not_ brushing, and an illustration of what looked like a sweeping wave of jagged-edged leaves in a color that was neither mint-green nor ocean-blue. He'd assumed it would be some flavor of mint when he'd bought it, but... it wasn't quite. Mint-ish, perhaps, with an odd soapy herbal top note, like maybe it was the custom in this region of Mountain Country to flavor toothpaste with cilantro. The only thing he was certain of was that it wasn't toxic. Probably. Although he wasn't planning on swallowing any, just to be safe.

Buying the toothpaste itself had been an adventure. Just walking into the shop had been cause for considerable excitement on the part of the other patrons, most of them shrunken older women in black head scarves that made him think of photographs of his great-great grandparents that had once stood on his mother's dresser. The women had gasped and clustered together in little knots in the side aisles, casting furtive glances at the obvious foreigner and saying things to one another about him that Genma could only guess at. Then the shopkeeper himself had come out from behind the counter and said something in the local language that Genma didn't understand at all. It was a safe assumption, he thought, that it ran something like, "Foreign devil soldier, buy whatever it is you came here for and stop frightening my customers."

Genma had smiled and bowed and tried not to be quite so tall and muscular and obviously a military man, which had won him no points at all. "I need some toothpaste," he'd told the man, throwing in another ingratiating smile, and was met with a blank stare as the insurmountable language barrier rose between them. So he'd mimed brushing his teeth, which had caused three of the women to make hex signs at him to ward off his evil curse, and probably to cast curses back on him. It was scary as fucking hell being around these civilians who made hand-signs like shinobi, didn't understand the first thing about chakra, and hated outsiders on general principle. In retrospect, though, it probably hadn't helped things much that Genma's response to the women had been to start to cast a defensive jutsu to shield himself. He'd stopped himself before he'd gotten through the third seal, but by then the damage was done.

The women had shrieked, Genma'd raised his hands palms outward in a gesture of surrender, the women had shrieked again, and he'd had to let the shopkeeper hit him with a truncheon just to keep the peace. Rubbing at the newly forming knot on his head, Genma'd tried again to communicate his need. This time with a prop, a hairbrush. He'd mimed brushing his teeth with it. That, at least, got the audience of angry grandmothers laughing. _Ahhhh, funny foreigner is an imbecile._ The shopkeeper'd produced a toothbrush, held it out for Genma to take, flinching away as soon as Genma's fingers touched it, and then held up four fingers of the other hand to indicate the price.

Which was when Genma sighed and shook his head. "Tooth_paste,"_ he'd said, frustrated, and mimed squeezing something onto the toothbrush. And that was when the shopkeeper had finally understood, led Genma to a shelf of cartons of tubes all bearing the unreadable script, with different color combinations. He'd chosen the one he had because it looked a little more promising than the orange and purple packaged one with the smiling eggplant illustration, and definitely more promising than the beige and black one, which had a badly-screened photograph of a ribbon of _black_ toothpaste coiled on the edges of what were probably meant to be bristles of a toothbrush.

In the end he'd had to buy the toothbrush, too, because he couldn't figure out how to communicate that he didn't need it, and the shopkeeper had gotten angry and threatened him with the truncheon again. So now here he was, in his shabby little hotel room, in its astonishingly cramped bathroom, brushing his teeth with cilantro paste. The unneeded toothbrush was still in its packaging, ready to be a souvenir for Raidou. Who had, Genma remembered after it was already too late, used the last of the toothpaste in Genma's kit on their last mission together.

Maybe he'd have to go back to the shop and buy the other two flavors, just to make the gift complete.

ooooo

_For Messypeaches who gave me the challenge, and Darksideofstorm who writes Raidou to my Genma in Fallen Leaves._


End file.
